Love A Good Fight? The Top 15 Best Boxing Films Ever

Mark “Marky Mark” Wahlberg is finally bringing his epic boxing film, “The Fighter” to big screens next week, so to honor his accomplishment, our friends over at Moviefone have put together a comprehensive list of the Best 15 Boxing Movies ever…

Their choice for #1 may be no surprise, but there are some rare gems in the list.

Brutality and humor make strange bedfellows, which is perhaps why the boxing comedy has never exactly taken off as a viable subgenre. Still, there’s an exception to every rule, and in this case that exception is ‘Diggstown;’ the 1992 film, which stars Louis Gossett Jr. and James Woods as two con-men trying to topple an evil empire through the power of boxing, has its share of both bruises and laughs. A forgotten gem.

Before the ‘Rocky’ franchise devoled into (lovable) camp with villains like Clubber Lang and Drago, star Sylvester Stallone managed to put together one of the best and most underrated sequels in modern times. Though the climactic and triumphant return to the ring and the end of the film is memorable, the best parts of this movie deal with Rocky’s efforts to retire and his inability to find a place for himself outside the squared circle. A surprusingly moving film.

A true old-fashioned Hollywood heart-wringer, ‘The Champ’ stars Wallace Beery as a washed up boxer called The Champ whose talents have been squandered thanks to drinking and gambling. After losing his son’s prize horse in a bet, The Champ returns to the ring in order to win him back — something he accomplishes only atthe cost of his own life. Beery won the 1931 Oscar for Best Actor for the part.

The 1996 Academy Award winner for Best Documentary, ‘When We Were Kings’ tells the tale of a boxing match too dramatic for fiction — the infamous 1974 heavyweight championship bout between George Forman and Muhammad Ali, better known as “The Rumble in the Jungle.” Perhaps the most famous boxing match of the last 50 years, the event was more than a championship fight — it was watershed cultural event for American and Africa alike